Monday, September 13, 2010

A Gathering of Bloggers and 4 Authors

Would you believe it...what the blog title suggests? No? Better believe it!Those patrons who were streaming in and out of the well-known Ampang Yong Tau Foo located on Upper East Coast Road, near the junction of Siglap Road, would not have known about this too. It was only last Saturday, Sept 4, that this informal gathering met over lunch. Occupying the yellow tables at the front of the eatery were 6 gentlemen having animated chats over the delicious food. What links all of them is the fact that all 6 are avid, veteran bloggers of note andall are Friends of Yesterday Sg( Foyers) . Among the group are 4 published authors.Photo: From Unk Dicko's camera showing from L to R:

Peter, who has blogged quite extensively on Good Morning Yesterday as a guest blogger of LCS,Noel( in red T ) who has an interesting Archaeology Blog,Victor another well-known blogger of blogsite Taking Up The Challenge, Tan Wee Kiat (Dr) who blogs about nature and stamps on the blogsite Retrieviaand Lam Chun See of Good Morning Yesterday.[ Btw, Chun See has written a post about this same meet up too. Do check it out. ]

All except for Peter and myself have published books to their names.Of course we were not there just discussing about books. We were there to enjoy each other's company and talk about blogging in general, about ourselves and share more interesting tidbits about Singapore life and some of our observations.This was my first meeting with Noel and Peter ( we knew each other online ). I have known Wee Kiat since the mid 70's and we were together on one unforgettable trip to Maxwell Hill where many of us were badly stung by hornets which required hospitalisation in Ipoh General Hospital. In our conversations, I also discovered that Wee Kiat and I both studied in the former Geylang English School....many years apart as he is way my senior. ( Look out for my very next post..it will feature our now defunct school and some old pics !).

About the Books:Chun See has kindly presented me a "signed" copy of his book shown below. I've gone through it and in retrospect wish he could have written it years earlier. Then I couldhave been better armed with such practical, workable ideas when sitting in the early version of MOE's WITs teams. We had no guidebooks to help us back then...just some adhoc notes andvery basic guidelines. True enough, most of such WITs eventually died a "natural" death as the majority of teachers, educators and even administrators found it rather "tedious" to set aside valuable time just to have some "verbal knock around ". There just wasn't anyone stimulated, passionate and qualified enough to bring WITs to a higher level. Chun See's presence and expertise in this field would have made a difference.But as they say, better late than never.

So I shall recommend this book to my friends and contacts in the schools and MOE.Congratulations Chun See for writing this practical and useful book!Wee Kiat, Noel and Victor are co-authors of the book shown below.It is an easy to read and understand kind of book featuring the many variedstamps of Singapore's past history. In this book, they showcase the VIPs...thosehistorical and important people who played critical roles in our history or whocontributed in a big way to the life and times of our nation.All these VIPs have been accorded everlasting respect and honour by being featuredon our Singapore stamps.

My mrs and I when younger used to collect stamps and 1st Day Covers as a hobby.Those covers and stamp albums have been out of sight for a long time...decades literally.I managed to locate a number and brought along to show our "expert" Wee Kiat just for the funof it. His expert eyes missed nothing!As was expected, most of the items are of good educational value.But there are a couple of the 1st Day Covers that are of value ! Which ones? Will need to blog about that.My warmest Congratulations to my 3 friends for this special book. Having gone throughmy signed copy ( THANKS!) and seeing the beautiful reprints of the stamps within its pages, I must regard it as a "Collector's item".Wee Kiat has also written quite a number of books for children.I like this one that he gave me signed with a cute "grandfatherly" message.All these books are available for sale to the public.

Below: The inside page of the Book.

The four authors have encouraged Peter and yours truly to " write a book". They are truly sincere and most inspiring!Well should I, could I ?What could I write about I wonder.

Thanks Noel! You had a link within your personal Blog homepage but I think most people will prefer a direct link. Will include and update this info.Btw, is it possible to send me that group pic by email?Thanks.

We certainly discussed a lot of things that day. Remember we also talked about the YOG and as usual you shared some little-known gems with us. Anyhow, by coincidence, my friend from Luxemberg sent me an article which her daughter wrote about the YOG, which I just posted at my blog.